Papa Vox: news you really didn't want to hear, plus pointless commentary. |
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Monday,
May 28, 2012
Science:
The odd things people do:
The trend is not about public safety, it's not about law and order, it's not about security. It's about who has power, and what they will do to keep or increase it. It's about the exercise of that power, and the widespread demand for instant, unquestioning obedience, enforced by taser-happy thugs. Disturbing, to say the least. Backpacking gear: Just in case you are in the market for a new sleeping bag, check out this excellent sale from Wiggy's: Ultra Light Camo - SALE. Why get a Wiggy's sleeping bag? Because they are very lightweight, very warm, impervious to water, nearly indestructible, machine washable and dryable, and proven for decades by the US military. Good stuff, and this sale is a screaming deal. I recently became enamored of the Trangia backpacking cooksets. It's a bit odd, since they are decidely "old" technology (updated with new lighter-weight materials) but there's a reason why they are still being made after over 50 years; they work. There is only one stove with a "zero-failure" rate for through-hikers on the Appalachian Trail: Trangia. They don't break. Here's why Trangia stoves are so great:
Modern Life:
Sunday, May 20, 2012 Science:
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 "I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry." -- President Barak Obama It's time. Right here, Right now, Today. Stand up and be counted. Join the President in support of marriage equality: http://www.barackobama.com/splash/stand-with-the-president?source=action-bar and http://dccc.org/pages/marriage-equality Tuesday, May 8, 2012 Years ago, I read an article about a woman who was driving the "established" scientific community nuts, by coming up with brilliant ideas that happened to be right, without being an "established" scientist. At the time, I thought, "what a totally cool lady!" Her name was Margie Profet and a few years ago, she went missing. Nobody knows if she is dead or alive. The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Genius. Science / the horse:
My prediction regarding FRACKING: we are just now witnessing the first shots fired in the Fracking War. We already have all the information we need to make an informed decision, and it's already perfectly clear that the Fracking methods currently employed cause massive environmental damage, permanent and horrific toxic contamination of groundwater, loss of human life, loss of animal life both domestic and wild, loss of habitat, destruction of vital farmland, and "Boom & Bust" destruction of communities. But it's profitable, so Big Oil is Fracking as much as possible, as fast as possible, in as many places as possible, for as long as possible -- before responsible regulation slowly and ineffectually starts to rein in the catastrophe.
The war between cars and humans (hint: the cars are winning)
Modern Life:
Politics and law:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 PSA: check your computer for the "DNS Changer" Trojan. Technology and Modern Design: I noticed a FaceBook post by a friend about a KickStarter project she was involved in (It Takes a Village to Raise an Oven - We Knead You!) and ended up spending a while browsing through the kickstarter.com site. It was inspiring. The current "state of the art" in modern design innovation is a joy to behold, and it makes me hopeful for the future. Not only do cool new products become available through innovation, but also problems get solved through functional effective innovation. It can be everything from the whimsical Grilled Cheesus sandwich maker to the cool Stainless Steel iPod Nano Watch Kit to the bomb-proof cellhelmet iPhone case (they'll buy you a new iPhone if yours breaks while inside the case) to the beautiful retro V-luxe iPad entertainment center. Some projects have gone on to become very successful businesses, like the must-have camping accessory the KAMMOK - ROO. "Use the Right Tool for the Job," my Dad always said, and literally every single person I know has ruined something by trying to use it as a small pry-bar. So instead of busting off a key, a fingernail, a nail file, a ballpoint pen, a pocket knife or a an irreplaceable tool on your $60 Leatheramn or Victorinox, all while simply trying to pry open something stubborn, why don't you use (*radical concept alert*) an actual pry bar? It's simple; you ruin something else because you don't have a small, lightweight, strong, and fantastically handy mini-pry bar with you. Well, buster, prepare to have your "EDC" (Every Day Carry) tool world rocked by the CountyComm - EOD Bar Family. The "Living Small" movement, for example shown here in Tiny SMART House, continues to flourish with this beautiful gem: Malissa Tack's Perfect Retreat. For living both small and Green, consider the humble, yet impossible to ignore mater of human waste: More Hot Poop on Composting and Alternative Toilets. The headline says it all: Insanely Expensive Gadgets for the Elite 1 Percent. This would be nice on the tiny counter top of your tiny kitchen, making top-quality shots without the huge space footprint (and $1k+ wallet-print) of a "normal" espresso machine: Presso - Espresso Coffee Maker. It's Your Money:
Wednesday, April 11, 2012 Site of the day: a beautiful way of showing what the winds across the US are doing, right now: Wind Map  The
use of "Smartphones" to gather invaluable data:
iPhone Geiger Counter Module. But
Smartphone data collection can also be used for
ubiquitous Big Brother surveillance: New
Microchip Knows Your Location To Within
Centimeters. How to strike a balance? Go
ahead and make smart phones able to collect all
sorts of helpful data, but make the data
submission anonymous. Why we should collect the data: for dramatically improved public safety without the loss of personal rights or freedoms. For example, with current technology, police could know instantly that a gun has been fired, and exactly where it happened. In high-crime areas, this would be very helpful, and if you just happened to be the one who got shot, help would be on its way in seconds. Ditto with severe car accidents, chemical spills, industrial accidents, deliberate illegal industrial waste dumping, nuclear power plant leaks, military weapons production "spills" and leaks, gas explosions, fires, earthquakes, widespread electrical outages, biological or nuclear weapons testing by rogue nations, severe weather, floods, bridge collapses, building damage, crowd-panic, the oft-touted (but highly unlikely) event of a genuine terrorist attack using biological or radiological weapons, the illegal manufacture of said weapons, and many other genuine public dangers. How would it work? The little microphone on a smartphone can pick up the very distinctive (and identifiable) sound of a gunshot, an explosion, a high-energy impact, or people screaming. The GPS can locate the disaster. A simple sensor chip added to the phone can detect radiation, act as a smoke alarm, and a chemical sensor. An accelerometer can detect earthquakes, life-threatening kinetic events like a car accident, an airplane crash or a train derailment. All of this can save lives and make people safer, without compromising privacy -- because nobody knows the identity of the "owner" of a particular data point. Even the most simplistic filtering methods would prevent "false alarms." Additionally, disclosing identity by choice
or by legitimate
judicial mandate can also be a godsend, with
for example, an elderly relative with
Alzheimer's, a juvenile just learning to
drive, someone on parole, a non-violent
"offender" on "early release" (which, by the
way, could save taxpayers hundreds of millions
of dollars a month) or someone with a dicey
medical condition. But simply handing over massive reams of identifying personal data on every aspect of our lives, to not just the police, but to the data-mining Corporate "Mothership" -- this is not a great idea. Science:
Three cool campers, two with aerodynamic low
profiles, one with DIY appeal:
Monday, April 2, 2012 The only Bible verse that Republicans truly believe in: "To everyone who has, more will be given, but for those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken." Science:
Health:
Living well:
Culture:
Politics:
Police State:
Monday, March 19, 2012 Science:
Living Well:
Culture:
Politics and Law:
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 At least for a while, you may wish to avoid visiting "WordPress" blog sites. The "WordPress" domain -- over 30,000 blogs -- has been infected with a redirect virus that sends you to bogus "antivirus scan" sites (over 200,000 of them and counting) that will install malicious software on your system, convincing you that you have a pile of terrible viruses, which can only be fixed by paying an "anti-virus" company (them) to fix the virus (theirs.) I was duped into this scam -- once -- and spent days trying (unsuccessfully) to remove the virus. I eventually resorted to a complete hard-disk wipe (reformat AND repartition) and reinstall. By the way, my current method of upgrading / fixing / "sprucing up" a computer is this: 1. Go buy a new hard disk. They are cheap, huge, and fast. Install it as "Master" (c:) 2. Do a new-from-scratch OS install (I highly recommend Ubuntu.) 3. Install your old hard disk as a "slave." That way, ALL of your old files are still there, and you need not do any "backup" at all. 4. Run a "deep scan" of your old drive with anti-virus, anti-adware, and anti spy-ware software to make sure it is clean. Sunday, March 4, 2012 Science:
Law and Politics:
Monday, February 20, 2012 Science:
Monday, February 6, 2012 Science:
Saturday, January 21, 2012  Monday, January 16, 2012 I find it interesting how much I missed over a year, especially those "big" news stories that just whizzed right past me. Looking over the "year in review" style articles is a way to find out if I was paying attention:
Monday, January 2, 2012 Happy New Year, everyone. Let's start off with good news: finally, after some years of waiting, the Volkswagen 282 MPG car will be produced -- in limited edition, for somewhere between $31k and $47k. Pro: it gets 282 mpg. Con: it's small. They call it the "One Liter" car because it burns one liter of diesel it its little 2-cylinder engine per 100 kilometers. On the other end of the spectrum, VW makes a 4.7 Liter behemoth that is actually an armored car, if you'd like to safely cruise the streets of the Top 100 most dangerous places to live in the USA in German uber-techno style. If your a 1%-er who'd like to cruise around in anonymous excessive luxury, you could buy one of the new stealth Ultra-posh Sprinter vans so you can sip Dom Perignon and eat caviar while looking like a delivery van. (Note to the 1%; the super-gleaming black versions with tinted windows and liveried chauffeur are a dead giveaway.) Personally, I'd choose the "One Liter Car" and move to one of The Healthiest Places to Live, and eat lots of Fish to Keep Your Brain Working, and cook perfect blinis and possibly Turkey on the barbecue. Hopefully, no matter where you live, you don't have Mysterious 13-pound metal spheres 3.6 feet in diameter falling on you from space, as they do Namibia. (And "commonly throughout the southern hemisphere" ?!?) Not as radical as it sounds: We need to design a new economic order. And it's true: our current economic environment rewards the rape of the environment, heavily-polluting industries, the destruction of communities, unconscionably bad treatment of working citizens, outrageous profiteering from the pain and suffering of Americans, and general Bad Behavior. And it also, by the way, richly rewards Going To War. It's not like we need to invent a whole new economic model: the "Economic Climate" is the result of very specific regulations, rules and policies, put into place over decades of tinkering, steered with absolute deliberation by the people who have the most influence over regulators and policy-makers. We could have an "Economic Climate" that favors peace over war, small business over large, working class Americans over Corporate Boards, clean industry over dirty, land stewardship over environmental rape, long-term prosperity over boom-and-bust, living wages over slave wages, and humane treatment of citizens over brutality. This is very, very simple, folks. It's all in the rules, regulations and policies. It doesn't take a re-write of the constitution, a "new world order," an overthrow of the government or an invasion of Space Aliens. It's very, very simple: just comb through the massive, crushing weight of rules, regulations and policies, review every single damn one of them, and rewrite them to favor the health and well-being of the people and the planet, instead of favoring the Profit and Power of the VERY FEW. History:
(See
the "Archives" for previous posts -- here's
the most recent)
Proud to be
a "True Blue" American.
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Papa Vox Archives: September through December, 2011 April through Aug, 2011 Sept through March 2011 July through Oct, 2010 Jan through June, 2010 Oct, Nov, Dec, 2009 July, Aug, Sept, 2009 April, May, June, 2009 Jan, Feb, March, 2009 Oct, Nov, Dec, 2008 July, Aug, Sept, 2008 April, May, June, 2008 Jan, Feb, Mar, 2008 Old and somewhat interesting posts, stripped of their former political grousing: 2007 2006 Hacking yourself: An experiment in the supposition that shoes are bad for you with reviews of various "nearly barefoot" alternatives to the evil shoe. An experiment in lowering the set-point as a means of safe, rapid, nearly-effortless weight loss. The miracle of medical massage. Where do your tax dollars go? Want your vote to count?     Cool links: Your daily Peanuts ® Astronomy Picture of the Day BoingBoing Investigate: Don't be suckered by a dubious email that smells like an urban myth. Look it up and find out: snopes.com breakthechain.org truthorfiction.com Recommended: David Brin's Blog One of today's greatest SciFi authors. A rational, scientific approach to modern life and governmental policy -- what a radical concept! Websites worth visiting: AMERICAblog Big Brass Blog Black Box BRAD BLOG Center for American Progress Crooks and Liars Daily Kos Dem Underground Economist Greenwald-Salon Groupnews Blog Huffington Post Left in the West Media Matters MM News MotherJones Nation NO QUARTER Susie Bright's Journal ThinkProgress TPMmuckraker TruthOut Papa's Reading list: Good books. Freedom in America today Educate yourself: WebMD.com The US Cabinet Your State Government Executive Orders Amnesty International Recommended Software: Free Anti-Virus programs. I currently use: avast!
Ad-Aware Spybot CCleaner All are free, all work great. They all update themselves when you ask them to -- which you should do once a week before you run the cleanup program. I've never had a single problem with any of them. Firefox is the browser recommended by computer security experts -- it's fast, safe, powerful, and free.  Thunderbird is a free email program with superior security and great features.  "Eudora OSE" Eudora-style version of Thunderbird -- free Stable release 1.0 Miro is a free open-source media player. Secure, private -- and it plays just about everything.  LINUX  Ubuntu  READ CAREFULLY. By reading this notice [ accepting this material / accepting this payment / accepting this business-card / viewing this t-shirt / reading this sticker ] you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON- NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non- disclosure, non- compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. |
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The contents of this web page are merely opinion. Harmless words. Nothing more. |
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An interesting question: 
